Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Eli’s eyes narrowed on Maddox, and it felt to me like something went unspoken between them that led to Maddox turning away.
“See what you can do with it,” Maddox said. “In the meantime, Emmett and I will see what we can shake loose.”
Maddox looked to me, the intent in his dark eyes bringing me to attention. For a while, I’d felt like a sidekick, not really relevant to the conversation. It made sense, since I didn’t understand half of what they were talking about. It was unnerving to be the sudden recipient of Maddox’s full focus.
“We’re still working on figuring out who got to your bank accounts,” he said. “We haven’t forgotten.”
I gave him a faint smile. “I didn’t think you had,” I said.
He nodded and turned back to whatever he was working on with Emmett.
“What’s that?” I asked Eli, looking at the hard drive in his hand.
He plugged it into his laptop. “A shit ton of files, one of which might match what was in that envelope I found in the post office.”
“Okay, what do we do?”
I watched as he navigated to the file browser on his laptop, clicked, then clicked again, and opened a folder filled with endless file names, all of which appeared to be in some kind of code.
“Fuck me,” I whispered under my breath.
He double-clicked one; it opened. He scanned and closed it.
“How will you know?” I asked.
“I think we’re looking for something related to a missing person, based on what we saw. I don’t know. I just have to look, dig around.”
“But how are we going to split that up?”
Eli sat back and rolled his shoulders, his eyes on me, studying my face. I felt like he could see how tired I was, frustrated by the boredom and lack of progress. Frustrated by what they wouldn’t—or couldn’t—tell me.
Research was my thing. It had to be, given what I did. But I spent an awful lot of my time on the move. As much as I was usually glued to my own laptop, pulling up old news articles or scouring forums, I was also on the phone, sending emails, driving to search for people, and convincing them to talk to me. Scanning through line after line of files I didn’t really understand, in search of clues I wasn’t sure what to do with, was a recipe for frustration.
Sitting this close to Eli was another layer of frustration. I was hyperaware that I was in the middle of a room full of trained investigators—none of whom I wanted to know that I’d slept with Eli multiple times in the last twelve hours.
I shifted, restless.
“Why don’t you go up front,” Eli said, “see if Alice can order us some coffee.”
I had the fleeting thought that he was trying to get rid of me, that maybe he had a better idea of where to find what he wanted in that drive than he was willing to tell me, and it’d be easier to do it with me out of the way. Part of me wanted to stick around and not let Eli brush me off. But the rest of me—bored, annoyed, frustrated, and feeling more than a little trapped—was happy to get out of Hacker Central and go chat with Alice. “Sounds great. What do you want?”
“Americano. Large,” Eli said.
“Done. You guys?” I asked Maddox and Emmett, who I knew, despite their turned backs, were listening.
“Same,” Maddox said.
From Emmett, I got, “Green tea. A gallon.”
I assumed that was an exaggeration, but Alice would know.
“All right, I’ll be back,” I said.
I made my way to the front of the office to find her. Today, she wore a navy and white polka dot dress, a red crinoline peeking out from beneath the full, tea-length skirt. Awesome clunky-heeled Mary Janes were on her feet. She was tapping her pen on her desk to a beat that existed only inside her head as she scrolled through what looked like flight reservations.
Her eyes brightened when she saw me. “Hey, Sylvie, how goes the research?”
“Boring,” I said, bracing my elbows on the tall front counter of her desk and leaning in. “So, so boring. If you’d told me elite private eye security dudes who looked like they could invade a small country and take it down single-handedly spent all day sifting through lines of code…”
“I know.” She rolled her eyes. “Sometimes what they do is a little too exciting.” She lifted her hand to pat her fingers over her heart. “Cooper knows when to keep the day’s activities to himself because I might have a stroke. But most of the time, it’s phone calls and sleuthing on the internet. At least you guys got to have some real-life fun yesterday.”
I wondered if Alice knew the full extent of what the visit had meant to Eli, and decided she probably did. She seemed to know everything.